


This City

by Punxutawney



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, Dark Knight (2008)
Genre: Gen, Nolanesque mood piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-01
Updated: 2009-03-01
Packaged: 2018-07-24 09:22:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7502889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punxutawney/pseuds/Punxutawney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gotham City through the eyes of a newcomer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This City

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at LJ in 2009.

To speak of cities as if they were family members or lovers, to meet them like friends with open arms is daring at best. A city isn't a single-minded creature with simple dreams and a set path, but a treacherous span of bad habits, bright ideas, and back alleys. It is an unfinished project: an endless work in progress that changes directions every second. It wears a thousand faces and speaks at once in a thousand hushed tones.

This city is a rotten mouth, full of teeth waiting to be pulled. A dark, stinking hole on the face of the earth. A sour, sore spot teeming with parasites. In daylight, its veins pulse with a flow of industrious, hopeful people on their way to the future and prosperity. Yet even in their brightest moment, these people will catch in their peripheral visions a trace of the nightside.

These people, these pitiful admirable people, the city wouldn't be anything without them. Amongst themselves, they'll complain about absolutely everything. They'll scratch and kick their beloved home straight in the face and then blame the disfiguration on something else. They'll ramble on about depression and business, about how dangerous it is to go out alone, and how their children deserve so much better than a life in this shadow-town. The city is born out of their screams and laughter.

At its core, this city is a murky pit of filth, but the good citizens are the first to ferociously defend it against an outsider's accusations. They have dreams here, and hopes, and they're a part of the city just as it is a part of them. They press themselves into the creases and folds, and the city presses back into them, breathing into their mouths and noses sweet fumes and hot urban air. People's voices interweave with the sound of the city's slow movements, creating an all-encompassing tapestry. It is the sound of going forward, of fighting, of holding your head up high.

This city has lived through one disaster after another, and it isn't going to crumble in this century. It stays tough. It adapts. It accepts the changes in the world around it, and sinks its teeth in hungrily. The gates and the ports are wide open, the sunlight bounces off glass and metal, and the life on display is busy and aggressive. By day, there is room for the brave and the able, for the knights in shining armor.

Come nightfall, the city bares a more frightful face. It is, most definitely, a night city, a deliciously dark playground for mean children with cruel games. The half-open doors and cracked windows spill just enough light to illuminate gleaming eyes and polished nails. Whoever moves through this city at night must abandon their sight and rely on other senses. Eyes are unreliable when everyone wears their skin inside out. Every friendly nook and cranny now becomes a doorway to a trap. Every helping hand caresses cold metal. It's not impossible to navigate through this night, but the perpetual need for caution will eventually wear anyone out.

One might say there is distorted poetic justice in the way the city treats its nastier inhabitants. The deftest little fingers digging into its skin, prowling its pockets and tugging at the seams will be snapped in half, yes. The swiftest legs running rampant will trip, the eyes too sharp and too burning will be blinded. If it's not done by law – and often, it isn't, for this city has a skin as slippery as oiled leather where words like _rights_ and _offenses_ slide right off – there will be other hands to catch the nimble little vermin and squeeze them tight. There will be wings, perhaps, and sharp, dark claws to carry out horrible, beautiful justice in this city.

At least, this is what he hears in other places, in other cities, in other skins, and through other ears. He can almost taste the sweat of the city, now, as he pictures the good times that lie ahead. He knows the city will be good to him, as he will be good to it. He will tickle its funny bone, oh, how he will! He'll slither and stroke his way right into its rumbling belly, and then into its beating heart and its boiling bloodstream. He knows how to do it. He'll make the city's bones shatter with laughter.

He can already tell that this city and he, they're going to get along famously.

**Author's Note:**

> Technically unspecified verse, but clearly I wrote this after watching Dark Knight. Also vaguely inspired by Warren Ellis.


End file.
